Journalism and the Trade Unions: Why do workers get short shrift in the news?

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With strike action increasing against a backdrop of further political constraints on trade union activity there is a lack of in-depth news reporting about pay disputes and employment issues. Nicholas Jones, former BBC industrial and political correspondent and Cardiff University Honorary Professor, will explore the reasons for the demise of industrial reporting – once a mainstay of UK national and local news – and why he believes the public are so short-changed by the news coverage of today.

In his book – The Lost Tribe: Whatever Happened to Fleet Street’s Industrial Correspondents – Jones charts how the world of work has become the domain of business, consumer, and political correspondents, often with a scant knowledge of employment and trade union affairs. Here he draws on his long experience as a top-level journalist and expert on political spin, alongside his vast personal archive of news, to offer his analysis of the present day.

Why is the British public so ill-informed about labour disputes? Why is the dominant Conservative-supporting press more interested in trashing trade union leaders than in explaining the reasons for workers’ grievances? Will the Tory tabloids back Prime Minister Liz Truss in her crackdown on “militant union barons” as slavishly as they did Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s?